by Tim Waggoner
"I'm not as good a shot with my left hand as I am with my right, but at this range, all I need to do is pull the trigger." I was struggling to control my emotions, knowing that if I was going to be any help to Devona I had to remain calm, but I was too scared and angry, and it came out in my voice. "You know the kind of ammo I carry – silver bullets dipped in holy water and garlic, and infused with so much magic that each bullet is practically an anti-Darkfolk bomb. So if you don't want me to finish the job Devona started and decorate the wall with the rest of your brains, you need to start talking and you need to do it fast."
"Please don't hurt him!" Shamika said, and she tried to come toward, but Bogdan held her back.
If Varney felt any fear, it didn't show on his face. "I'll tell you whatever you want to know, but first tell me where Devona is."
"I don't know where she is!" I said, almost shouting. "She vanished before my eyes!"
Part of my mind was already starting to wonder if the missing magic-users had all disappeared the same way, but right now I was too upset to worry about solving mysteries. I just wanted to get Devona – and our unborn children – back safely.
I pressed my weapon harder against Varney's head and I tightened my finger on the trigger. "Who are you really?" I demanded.
"My name truly is Varney, but my job as a cameraman is just a cover. My real employer is Lord Galm, and he assigned me to watch over Devona during her pregnancy. It was my idea to do a documentary on you, so I'd have an excuse to stick close to her."
I thought back to Galm's visit to Devona in the Fever House. He'd tried so hard to convince her to move back to the Cathedral where she'd be safe for the rest of her pregnancy. While that was the first time he'd expressed his concern about her pregnancy to us, in typically devious Darklord fashion, Galm had put an agent in place to guard Devona well before that.
I thought about it for a moment, and then I removed my gun from Varney's head, though I didn't holster it. "That explains why you were so upset you couldn't accompany us with Darius to the alternate Nekropolis. You were worried something might happen to Devona and you wouldn't be there to protect her, like you did when the Weyward Sisters destroyed the Bridge of Nine Sorrows and at the Grotesquerie."
I stood and reached out to help him up, but he just stared at my wrist stump.
"Sorry. I had hold of Devona's shoulder when she vanished, and my hand went with her." I wished the rest of me had gone along for the ride. Wherever she was right then, I might have been able to help her. If nothing else, at least we'd have been together.
I lowered my arm and Varney got to his feet on his own.
"Now that you know the truth, there's no need for me to pretend anymore," he said, and as I watched, the ruin of his cybernetic eye began to repair itself. "My systems are more sophisticated than they appear."
"And I bet that's more than just a camera too."
Varney smiled.
"You know," I said, "Devona's going to be very upset when she learns that you've been spying on her all this time." Assuming we ever find her, I thought, and then hated myself for it. We'd find her. Somehow. We had to. I couldn't imagine life – even my zombie version of it – without her.
"Not spying. Watching over her," Varney said. "It's not the same."
"Try telling that to her. All right, so now we know who you are." I turned to Shamika and Bogdan and pointed my 9mm at the girl. "How about you?"
Shamika's eyes widened at the sight of my weapon trained on her, but she said nothing.
Bogdan looked shocked. "You can't be serious, Matt!"
When I spoke, my voice was as cold as only the voice of a dead man can be. "The woman I love just vanished, and I suspect our most dangerous enemy is responsible. I'll do whatever is necessary to get her back, and if that means threatening a young girl, so be it. Both Varney and Shamika have been keeping secrets from me. Varney's spilled his guts, and now it's time for her to do the same."
Bogdan looked at me, shock in his eyes, along with something else. He was seeing a different side of me, one he hadn't known existed, and I could tell he was reappraising me.
"Matt," he said softly, speaking in the overly gentle way people talk to someone who's on the verge of losing it. "Don't do this. She's just a girl." My gun hand didn't waver.
"This is Nekropolis," I said. "No one's ever just anything here."
Bogdan opened his mouth as if he intended to argue with me, but then he shut it. He knew the truth when he heard it.
I trained my best intimidating gaze on Shamika, one I'd honed during my years as a cop and enhanced by the fact that zombies don't need to blink.
"You're not really Papa Chatha's niece, are you?"
I was trying to look and sound scary – I figured the acid-vomit scars on my face had to help – but as upset as I was over Devona's disappearance, I didn't have to try very hard. I'd suspected for some time that neither Varney nor Shamika was telling the truth about who they were, but I'd let it go, telling myself that the time would come to confront them. Varney had turned out to be benign enough – assuming his story was true, and it meshed with what I'd observed, and it was exactly the sort of devious controlling move Devona's father would make. But if it turned out that Shamika was mixed up in this somehow, if she was responsible for Devona's disappearance in even the most tangential way, I'd never forgive myself for not confronting her earlier with my suspicions.
But despite my attempt to intimidate her, Shamika didn't seem scared in the slightest. Instead, she seemed sad. "I'm not his niece," she confirmed. "I've never even met him."
"Then who are you?" I demanded.
She paused, and then almost apologetically, she said, "I'm Gregor's sister."
I looked at her for a long moment, and even though I didn't need to blink, I blinked in surprise.
"Uh… what?"
FOURTEEN
"Who's Gregor?" Bogdan asked.
I ignored him and continued focusing on Shamika.
"Gregor can't have a sister. The Watchers are a group mind that share a single consciousness."
"Gregor is only one manifestation of that consciousness," Shamika said. "I'm another.
"But you don't look anything like Gregor." I kept my gaze – and my 9mm – on Shamika, but I spoke to Bogdan and Varney now. "Gregor was – is – some kind of insect thing. A giant roach with obsidian gems for eyes. And his component parts are miniature versions of him. He posed as an information broker located in the Boneyard. His insects traveled throughout Nekropolis, watching from the shadows, gathering information, eventually returning to Gregor to report what they'd learned. But Gregor had his own reasons for gathering as much knowledge as he could, and they had nothing to do with turning a profit. When Dis and the Darklords first traveled to this dimension to build Nekropolis, they discovered something was already living here. Millions, hell, maybe trillions of small insect-like creatures. The native life form didn't appear to be intelligent and showed no reaction to the Darklords' arrival. So the Darklords thought no more about them and began the work of creating their great city.
"Turns out the life forms were sentient, but their group intelligence was so different from that of any Earth creature, the Darkfolk included, that it didn't even recognize the newcomers as life forms, for it had no concept of Otherness. But as the centuries passed, the intelligence's insect components infiltrated the city and secretly watched the citizens of Nekropolis, eventually coming to understand Otherness – and to hate it.
"The Watchers' group mind created Gregor as a mask for itself, a way to interact with Darkfolk and study them more directly. It gathered all the knowledge it could, with the ultimate goal of finding a way to destroy the Others who'd invaded its home dimension. Once the Darkfolk were no more, things would return to the way they were, the way they were supposed to be, and the Watchers would be alone once more."
I paused and looked hard at Shamika. "How am I doing so far?"
"I'd argue some of the details, but your tale
is essentially accurate."
"Good," I said, a sarcastic tone in my voice. "I wouldn't want to misrepresent you." I went on with my story. "Last Descension Day, Gregor stole a magical artifact called the Dawnstone from Lord Galm. The Dawnstone was the only object in Nekropolis capable of emitting actual sunlight, and Gregor planned to use it to disrupt the Renewal Ceremony. Umbriel does more than provide the shadowy half-light that illuminates the city. The Shadowsun's power keeps Phlegethon burning and maintains the city in this dimension. Gregor planned to use the Dawnstone to kill Father Dis, and without his power, the five Darklords wouldn't be able to recharge Umbriel on their own. The Shadowsun would fade away, Phlegethon would go out, and the deadly energies of this dimension would pour into the city, destroying everyone in it. And Gregor would've succeeded if Devona and I hadn't stopped him.
Afterward, Dis paid Gregor a visit and used his vast power to erase him from existence, along with every other Watcher in the city. Or so I thought."
"All true," Shamika said. A slight smile then moved across her lips. "But it's not the whole story."
I kept my gun trained on her. "Then why don't you tell us the rest of it?"
Before Shamika could go on, Bogdan interrupted. "Do we really need to keep standing here in the hallway like this, with you waving your gun around like some kind of zombie cowboy, ready to shoot first and ask questions later?"
"I am not waving it around," I said. "I'm holding it rock-steady. And in point of fact, I'm asking questions now, and I have yet to fire a single bullet." Still, I understood what the warlock was trying to get at. Shamika hadn't made a threatening move toward any of us in the time I'd known her, and she was cooperating with my interrogation. And if she really was a Watcher, even the special ammunition in my gun probably wouldn't do much more than tickle her. What finally broke the tension for me, though, was the tiny breeze that blew through my hair. Rover was back – small and weak, but he was still alive, if that word can be applied to a creature made entirely from magic – and he was recovering. I made a decision.
"I guess we're not going to find Devona standing around like this." It was awkward using my left hand, but I managed to holster my gun. Then I bent down and picked up the spent reverser. The talisman would be useless until Devona could get it recharged, but I didn't want to leave it lying around. The damn things were incredibly expensive, and Devona only owned a couple. I vowed to hold onto this one and give it back to her when I saw Devona again. And I would see her again, even if I had to open a Kongar-sized can of whup-ass on the entire city to make it happen.
"You can still call me Shamika if you like. It's a good name, isn't it? I got it from a woman who works as a chef at the Six-Legged Café. I figured that since she cooks insects, and my people resemble insects…" She grinned as if she was making a joke, but when none of us reacted, her smile fell away. "I thought it was kind of funny. I guess I don't fully understand humor yet."
We were back in the great room. I stood at my usual place by the illusory fire, Varney once again leaned on the wall opposite me, but this time only Shamika sat on the couch. Bogdan was standing over next to me. We'd taken a moment to check on Tavi. The lyke was still unconscious, but the lower half of his body had begun to regenerate. The healing was proceeding at a glacial pace, and it might be days before he was whole again, if not longer, but at least he was healing.
Varney's optic implant had completely repaired itself by now, and his cybernetic eye glowed red. I had no doubt it functioned as a weapon as well as a camera, and though I'd chosen to holster my gun, I suspected Varney was – not to make a pun – keeping his eye on Shamika.
"But you don't look like an insect," Varney said. "You look human."
"I can look like whatever I want," Shamika said. "We didn't have any form before the Darklords arrived. We were one vast shadowy creature, stretching for hundreds of miles in all directions. But when the Darklords saw us moving and rippling in the dark, one of them thought we resembled a carpet of black insects, and so we took that form."
"Insects with obsidian gems for eyes?" Bogdan said.
"It was Varvara, wasn't it?" I said. "She was the Darklord who accidentally gave you form, and you gained gem-like eyes because she thought of a demonic version of an insect."
"That's right," Shamika said. "We kept that form for many years, even after we began to become aware of the Darkfolk as Others. Insects can go anywhere in a city. There are thousands of places to hide, and when insects are spotted, no one pays them much attention. It was a perfect guise to wear while we conducted our observations. But we are not limited to that form."
I thought of murals I'd seen on the walls of the Nightspire depicting images of the Darkfolk's origins and evolution. The Darkfolk had begun as amorphous shadow creatures that were psycho-reactive, and as humans evolved, the Darkfolk took on shapes and attributes inspired by humanity's fears and nightmares. The Shadowings evolved naturally, but humans had turned them into the Darkfolk. From what Shamika was saying, it sounded like something similar had happened in this dimension. Only in this case, it was the Darkfolk who had unwittingly turned the native life form into the Watchers.
A couple more pieces of the puzzle fell into place for me then. "When you got blasted outside Overhexed, I saw you fall apart, just like I did. Except that you were separated into your component pieces, and all you had to do was reassemble them. And those chiranha you called upon to deal with Magilla. They weren't really chiranha at all, were they? They were more components of you that took on the form of chiranhas."
"Right on both counts," Shamika said. "Since I'm not really Arcane, I can't perform any magic. I know lots about magic," she hastened to add. "I know all kinds of things from my years observing the Darkfolk. I just can't work any spells. So I used my abilities to fake magic powers."
"Why masquerade as a human?" I asked. "And why pose as Papa Chatha's niece in particular?"
I remembered when we'd been in Papa's workroom, and Dis appeared and froze time for everyone but him and me. He'd given Shamika a look then, almost as if he'd known who and what she was, but he hadn't said anything to me about it. Maybe he'd just sensed something odd about her but hadn't been able to put his finger on it. Then again, he was Father Dis, the single most powerful creature among all the Darkfolk that had ever existed. I had a hard time believing he hadn't recognized Shamika as a Watcher. But if he had, why hadn't he done anything about it? Why hadn't he at least warned me?
"I told you that Gregor and I are different manifestations of the same consciousness. Gregor is the part of us that fears Otherness. I am the part that is intrigued by it. Where he observes in order to gain knowledge to destroy the Darkfolk, I observe simply because I wish to learn more about you. I take on humanoid form so that I can move freely among you and interact." She smiled playfully, looking like the teenage girl she resembled. "It's a lot more fun that way. As for why I posed as Papa Chatha's niece… well, that's more complicated." Her smile faded. "Dis did destroy every one of us in Nekropolis after Gregor's plot to stop the Renewal Ceremony failed. Dis killed us all – both those who were Gregor and those who were me. But even though Dis is a god by your standards, even his power has limits, and only those Watchers within the city were slain. So we waited a bit and then more of us simply moved in." A ghost of her smile returned. "Just like real insects, we're damn hard to get rid of."
"But if Dis destroyed you both, how do you still have your memories?" I asked.
"We're not the same as you. Our memories aren't stored within a single body or even a thousand bodies for that matter." She pointed to the stump of my right wrist. "It's more like your injury. You've lost a hand, but you haven't lost the essence of who you are. It was the same with us."
I was about to ask Shamika another question when I had the strangest sensation that my right hand was moving – except of course I had no right hand. It was with Devona, wherever she was. I chalked the sensation up to the phantom limb syndrome that amputees often experience
and decided to leave it at that. But it was a really weird feeling.
Thinking of Devona made me realize something else, and I felt a surge of new hope.
"If you and Gregor are different aspects of the same mind, that means you know what he knows," I said, "which means you know what happened to Devona!"
"I'm sorry, Matt, but it doesn't work like that. I wish it did. Gregor and I might technically be the same mind, but our different… viewpoints, for lack of a better word, have caused us to become separated. Right now, we're more like one mind suffering from multiple personality disorder, and our separate personalities can't and won't communicate." She smiled sadly. "In fact, Gregor views me as the ultimate proof of the contaminating effects of Otherness. Where once we were one, now we're two. He blames the Darkfolk for this schism in our shared being, and it's only strengthened his determination to see you all destroyed."
"What's the point of being an unimaginably vast shadow creature if you don't have access to all your memories? It's a damned inefficient way to run a group mind, if you ask me." I sighed. "I should've known it wouldn't be that easy."
"I watched you and Devona stop Gregor from disrupting the Renewal Ceremony, and when I learned that Gregor was abducting Arcane, I knew he had come up with a new plan to destroy the Darkfolk. I like watching the Darkfolk. They're interesting, and I've learned so much from them. I won't let Gregor hurt them, and I'll do whatever it takes to stop him. I tried to discover what his plan is, but though I searched throughout the city, I couldn't find where he'd taken the Arcane, nor could I discover what he wanted them for. I knew I needed help, and I immediately thought of you and Devona. And once Papa Chatha was abducted, I knew how I could approach you. I was too afraid to come to you as myself. I feared you wouldn't trust me if you knew who and what I really was. But if I posed as Papa Chatha's niece… I kept watch on you, and when I learned you were going to see him, I got to his home before you, let myself in, and waited."
